What To Expect When Your Assassin's Expecting
by Trivial Pursuit
Summary: The Black Widow is pregnant, Fury's doing some uncharacteristic boot-quaking, and Tony's taking bets on the whole shebang, what could possibly go wrong? Part of the Triviaglass Avengers 'Verse.
1. From Russia, With Love

(The Black Widow would like to note that any part of this report that features her crying or whining is absolutely, one hundred percent fictitious and a result of a powerful hallucinogenic toxin released in Stark Tower at the time of her pregnancy.)

(Anthony E. Stark would like to note that the Black Widow frequently lies.)

(The Black Widow would like to note that Anthony E. Stark will soon be losing several essential items in the near future.)

(Director Nicolas Fury would like Stark and Romanova to stop interfering with his goddamn reports.)

**Two Weeks**

It's sitting on the coffee table after she leaves for a mission. Darcy has just sent him back to have a shower and put on a clean shirt when he sees it, a little white stick with a little pink plus sign on it. He doesn't go back to the lab until she returns four days later. He just sits on the couch with the stick in one hand and a tumbler full of whiskey in the other, staring at that little symbol.

It's strange, he thinks, that something so small could change everything.

She enters quietly on his fourth day of vigil and wordlessly sits down next to him.

'You're pregnant.'

'Yes.' She's apprehensive about it, he can tell, even if nobody else could.

'We're going to have a baby.' He sounds terrified, yet resolved.

'Yes.'

'On a scale of on to ten, how much therapy is this kid going to need?'

'Eleven.' He smiles slightly.

'Though so. So what do you want to do?' It's not leading, simply an enquiry into how she wants to handle this particular development.

'I think I might want to keep it. You?'

'Yeah, I think I do too.' She rests her head on his shoulder and he wraps his arm around her shoulders.

**Four Weeks, Two Days**

They're sitting in Medical in those hard plastic chairs that you can only find in hospitals. Due to the Other Guy and Natasha's general distrust of anything she can't control their only option for an OB/GYN was the one SHIELD had on staff. Bruce had been rather uncomfortable entrusting his child, unborn or not, to the government. However, Natasha was equally adamant that she would not _under any circumstances_ be putting her offspring in the clutches of some civilian who could be a Red Room agent or a psycho general with a vendetta or some such, _especially_ with their luck. It's Natasha that's going to be squeezing the Unholy Spawn (as Natasha and Bruce have taken to calling it after the first round of morning sickness) out of her vagina so Natasha gets to choose where she's going to do it.

There's a couple of agents getting treated for broken ribs and the like when they come in, nothing major. Nobody's tried to take over the world with some pathetically poorly thought out yet highly destructive plot and for that Natasha is grateful.

Bruce has his eyes closed and is doing a few deep breathing exercises and looks just about ready to Hulk-out. She knows Clint's in the vents with a pack of Hulk tranquilizers on hand in case her husband looses control. Not that she thinks he will, and it irritates her that SHIELD still has so little faith even after everything he's done. But she still understands, everybody knows Bruce hates going to Medical, even if nobody knows why they're there. Nick Fury didn't get where he is today by underestimating people.

'The Doctor will see you now Agent Romanoff, Dr Banner.' A starchy looking nurse looks rather excited to be able to tell the water cooler that _The Hulk_ _and_ _The Black Widow_ went to see the OB/GYN looking incredibly stressed out. Natasha shoots the nurse a chilly glare and suddenly the woman's paperwork is _very_ interesting.

Natasha dislikes Doctor Carrow the moment she meets her. Dr Carrow's an embittered old hag with no sense of humour who keeps glaring at Bruce like he'd murdered her firstborn. They were getting the first ultrasound done when the dislike turns to pure hatred.

'The baby appears to be fine.' The woman was pinched and unpleasant, what Natasha thinks Tony would describe as 'A humourless old crone who spent her evenings listening to her cervix cobweb over'.

'So it might not be part Hulk?' Bruce's voice is hopeful. Natasha knows he wants kids but is completely afraid that the baby's going to have his or her own 'Other Guy'.

'For now _it_ seems fine.' Natasha feels the tense muscles in her shoulders relax, 'Why you're having children with this _man_ I'll never know.' The woman adds under her breath. Bruce is too busy perusing the ultrasound to notice anything

'Excuse me?' Natasha's hands tightly clench the arms of her chair.

'Nothing.' Dr Carrow is nowhere _near_ as frightened as she should be.

'No, you said something. I'd like to hear it.'

'I-' I loud clattering sound from the vents interrupts her and Clint drops down from the ceiling.

'The Banners are done here, right lady?' Not waiting for a response Clint and Bruce led her out of the examining room. Natasha will be eternally grateful that her beloved partner and adored husband keep her from ripping the woman's throat out. That of course doesn't mean the bitch will get away with implying her husband is a monster. It just means Natasha has to be more subtle about it.

'Do I even _want_ to know what that was about?' Bruce has a slightly exasperated look on his face and Natasha just smiles grimly.

'Don't worry _lyubovnik_, it's all going to be taken care of.'

'Just don't get caught.' Natasha kisses Bruce, then turns and, grabbing Clint by the arm, leads him away to plan.

'You're pregnant?'

'Yep.'

'Can I be the godfather?'

'We'll see.'

And if, three days later, Dr Carrow's home in burned to ash and no other house touched, or that, two days after the fire, the good doctor is frogmarched out with a cardboard box of what are now all her earthly possessions, Natasha wouldn't know anything about it and would smile mysteriously and say that Dr Carrow had 'Sown the wind and now she must reap the whirlwind'.

**Five Weeks, Three Days**

'Agent Romanoff, there's a man in Bucharest who's been giving us a bit of trouble. Got his hands on some warheads, and is pointing them rather uncomfortably near the American Embassy.' Fury stands on his little screen-surrounded pedestal, looking expectantly at the conference table where Natasha and Clint sit with Agent Sitwell.

'Sure-' Natasha starts but is cut off by her partner.

'I'll do it, Tasha can't though.'

'I'll be fine. It's just a kiss, kiss, bang, bag mission, no real skill required.' Her attitude is blasé, though this doesn't really tell Fury anything about her supposed 'condition'.

'Then let me do it. Stay at home, drink a cup of tea, get a massage, pick out paint colours.' Nick Fury smirks internally. The day he sees the Black Widow doing any of the aforementioned things he'll get Sitwell to check for airborne swine.

'Why, pray tell, would Agent Romanoff be unable to complete this mission?'

'Tash, you gotta tell them.'

'I'll be fine.'

'Agent Romanoff, if there's something that may jeopardize you and any partners I send you on a mission with you have to tell me now.'

'It'll be fine.'

'She's pregnant.'

'Clint, you are _meat_,' Her tone is perfectly serious, 'And I'm getting Stark to be godfather.'

'You are having a _child_? With Banner?' Sitwell's tone is, rather alarmingly, _almost_ what one could call afraid.

'Who else would I procreate with?'

'I was worried you'd say you were going to have some world-destroying child with Loki or Stark.'

'No, I'm just having a half-Hulk baby with my husband.' Natasha smirks and everyone within earshot blanches.

'The doctor said that thus far the baby is healthy.' Bruce interrupts plaintively.

'The doctor is also an incompetent fool.'

'Yes, well, I'll have to draw up a couple of contingency plans for that.' Fury interjects, 'You'll be put on reserve until you finish your maternity leave. I assume you want to break the news to the team yourself?' Natasha smirked and nodded.

**Six Weeks, Four Days**

'Natasha?' Pepper poked her tentatively in the arm, 'You just spattered the leader of AIM with vomit.'

'Yep.'

'What's going on?'

'When a woman and a man love each other very much-'

'You're _pregnant_?! Fantastic!'

'Yep.'

'Should you be fighting? It could hurt the baby.'

'The doctor says as long as I wear extra protection, stay out of the more unstable situations and just generally use some common sense we both should be fine. Just don't tell anyone else, I want to see how long it takes them to figure it out themselves.'

'I can't _wait_ to see Tony's face.' Pepper snickered conspiratorially.

**Seven Weeks, Five Days**

'_Chert vozʹmi_, I need to pee.' Natasha and Tony were sitting at the conference table in the Helicarrier, waiting for Fury to sign off on something-or-other that Tony wanted to blow up.

'_Really_, Natashalie? You just went eight minutes and fifteen seconds ago. I haven't seen someone need to pee this often since Pepper was preggers with the twins.'

'You're timing my bowel functions Stark? If that's not creepy I don' know what is. And I doubt your loving and long-suffering wife would be pleased to hear you refer to her benevolent act of bringing your spawn into the world as 'Preggers'.'

'Yes, well, what Pepper doesn't know won't hurt her. Or more importantly, me.'

'You keep telling yourself that.'

'I will.' Tony suddenly jumped up and started waving his arms around, drawing a few alarmed stares from the SHEILD agents. 'You,'

'Me. Na-tash-a.'

'You are incredibly clever but not smart enough to outwit me with your mind games and machinations!'

'Yeah, right, _you_, outsmart _me_? In your dreams, Stark.'

'And again, you digress, hoping to draw me away from the matter at hand.' Natasha raised an unimpressed eyebrow in response. 'You have to pee all the time, you've started taking naps, you puked on that AIM dude -That was totally awesome, by the way-, you've stopped drinking the crude oil you call coffee and your patriotic lifeblood, vodka, you started crying during _Four Weddings and a Funeral_, something which nobody on the face of this planet has ever done before, you weren't eating Steve's omelettes yesterday and looked like you were going to puke.'

'First of all, _Four Weddings and a Funeral_ is a very emotional movie. Secondly, what's your point besides the fact that you might just beat Clint and I in the 'Creeper of the Year' awards?'

'I, Anthony Edward Stark, hereby wager my entire fortune on the fact that _you_, my dear Natashalie, are pregnant.'

'Okay.'

'Okay?'

'Okay.'

'Okay what? '_Okay, you're so obviously a genius Tony. Why yes of course me and my hubby have a little somethin'-somethin' cooking in my bio-oven, I don't even know why we try to hide these things from your stunning intellect anymore_' or '_Okay, Tony you're a complete mastermind who is totally wrong but that doesn't change the fact I'm hiding something_'?'

'Okay.'

'Is it Bruce's?… Ow, owowowow owie, owie, owie. Ouchie! My _fingers_! Okay, I get it, I'm _sorry_!'

'Stark, you are forgetting something.' Natasha sing-singed.

'_Congratulations_ Natasha.'

**Seven Weeks, Six Days**

'Bruce, _move_, it's my turn.'

'My head…'

'It's your own fault, you shouldn't have gone out for celebratory drinks with Stark, Clint, and Thor-' She was cut off by a stream of what appeared to be last night's stroganoff making a reappearance.

'You're right _moy malenʹkiy pauk_, and now I must reap the consequences.' Bruce rubbed soothing circles on her back with one hand and held back her hair with the other. 'Ugh, my _head_…'


	2. The Spy Who Loved Me

**Twelve Weeks, One Day**

'That's our baby.' Bruce's voice was full of wonder as he gazed at the at the tiny black-and-white screen in the doctor's office.

'He's so… _small_.' Natasha clutched at Bruce's hand, not noticing as the doctor moved the little ultrasound wand around on her stomach, squishing the cold gel across her skin

'How do you know it's going to be a he?' Bruce laughs slightly, 'What happens if it's a girl?'

'It will be a boy. I know. My mother knew. My grandmother knew. Romanovas always know.' Natasha shakes her head imperiously, and, lying on her back with her stomach bare and covered in cold slime, Bruce thinks Natasha looks like a Tsarina.

'We'll pick out two names just to be safe.' Bruce says because he is _Bruce Banner_, the man who makes contingencies for his contingencies that put Nick Fury to shame, but he knows she's right.

Natasha likes the name Roman.

**Twelve Weeks, Five Days**

'Stark,' Natasha's voice rings through the lab, bringing any and all activity to a standstill as Jane, Erik, Bruce, Darcy, and any other hapless interns and lab assistants who happen to be in the assassin's way follow _Jurassic Park_'s words of wisdom. 'What's this I hear about a betting pool?'

'Oh, you know, nothing.' The billionaire laughs and everyone in the room knows he is nowhere as scared as he should be.

'Really, you betting on whether my baby is going to be a boy or a girl is _nothing_?'

'Uh… JARVIS? Tell Pepper and the twins I love them. Also, make sure I have totally awesome last words, nothing lame like 'Hot patootie, bless my soul, I really love that Rock n Roll!' or 'I don't even have an opinion.'. That would just be fucking sad.'

'Noted, sir.'

'Oh, Tony, you're not going to _die_. Oops, no wait, I can't say that, since I might just let it slip, accidentally, of course, to Pepper about your little scheme.'

'What do you want?'

'Fifty percent of the profits.'

'Ten.'

'Fifty.'

'Twenty.'

'Fifty.'

'Thirty-five.'

'Fifty.'

'And you won't tell Pepper?'

'Yes.'

'Done.'

'Pleasure doing business with you, Stark.'

**Thirteen Weeks, Five Days**

'Natasha, guess what today marks?' Bruce smiles slightly as she rolls over in bed.

'What?' She mumbles belligerently.

'The fourth morning you've gone without throwing up.'

'That's very nice, now let me go back to bed.' She curls her body around him, flinging an arm across his chest.

'Jesus woman, what are you, an icicle?'

'The warmth of Siberia runs in my veins.' They are silent for a moment before she mumbles 'I miss coffee.'

'I miss that you used to smell of coffee.'

'I miss being able to wear my favourite pencil skirt.'

'I miss seeing you in your pencil skirt.'

'I miss vodka, caviar, and pickles.'

'I just miss the caviar and pickles.'

'I miss my body.'

'I love your body.'

'I love you.'

'Ya tozhe tebya lyublyu.'

**Fifteen Week, Six Days**

'Urg! I hate this dress!' Natasha flung the offending garment across the room in rage.

'What's wrong?' Pepper was stroking mascara into her eyelashes at Natasha's mirror.

'My dress, it doesn't fit anymore. I fucking love this dress and it gives out on me at the first sign of crisis! When I was little my _mama_ wore her normal clothes all the way through her pregnancy with me.'

'Well, unfortunately for us girls, this ain't the golden years of clothing anymore.' Pepper smiled, 'We'll have to take you out shopping soon.'

'Shopping?'

'Yes.'

'You _know_ how I feel about shopping.'

'I do, however, you have to take one for your wardrobe and buy a few new things so that, by the time this baby comes around, you haven't completely ripped through your closet.'

'Bruce's-' Natasha protested as she pulled a purple oxford out of her significant other's closet.

'Bruce has enough trouble keeping his own clothes as-is, I don't think he needs you pilfering out of his closet too.'

Natasha assents to this and allows Pepper to take her out shopping, but she still wears Bruce's shirts every day as soon as her's get too small.

**Sixteen Weeks, Four Days**

Nobody patted the Black Widow's stomach. Nobody.

Or at least, nobody after some well-intentioned junior agent whom she'd never before met in her life patted her stomach in the elevator.

It's all very simple, break one's fingers and all the others will act accordingly (A vague disclaimer is nobody's friend.).

After three minutes with Fury so that he can determine she hasn't cracked, yell at her for breaking an agent's fingers then sigh and say that 'If it happens again please just be a _little_ more subtle about it'.

Pepper had been waiting outside of Fury's office and promptly grabbed Natasha's hand and dragged her off for peppermint hot chocolate and show Natasha her children's latest baby photos and recommend a massage therapist.

Natasha's baby bump had just recently started to show in the past few weeks, necessitating Natasha go on a shopping trip to procure clothing that fit and did not rob her of breath to wear (Read: Darcy and Pepper picked things out and Natasha stood off to one side, stepping in only to reject the more outlandish choices). The poor salesgirl looked like she was going to have a heart attack from the sheer fright of having the 'scariest' (_TIME_ magazine) of the Avengers in an unusually temperamental state shopping with the CEO of Stark Industries and an anonymous but frighteningly snarky girl.

She had also found that she simply could not stop eating. It was the cause of much private snickering, to see a woman Natasha's size out-eating Thor. Tony had made a joke to her face about it. Once.

Natasha had burst into tears (Whether they were real or fake nobody will _ever_ know) and smacked him rather hard with the copy of _War and Peace_ she'd been reading to her stomach (Pepper had informed her reading to the foetus helped cement the mother-child bond).

Tony was _so_ lucky Bruce was in the lab.


	3. Live and Let Die

**Seventeen Weeks, Five Days**

'Natasha?'

'Yes, _lyubovnik_?'

'Are you reading _Casino Royale_ to our foetus?'

'I was.'

'Shouldn't you be reading, I don't know, _Winnie the Pooh_ or _Peter Pan_? Aren't you dooming our child to a life as John Drake?'

'Peter Pan was giving the foetus and I unpleasant flashbacks to _Dyadya_ Tony and _Dyadya_ Clint. Besides, our child would be George Smiley.' Bruce snorts.

'I would have though you were more of a Bourne Girl than Bond.'

'Blasphemy.'

'Personally, I always liked Steed best.'

'Was it Diana Rigg in a leather catsuit or the bowler and umbrella?'

'Defiantly the bowler and umbrella.'

'Right.'

'Now, the real question is, Briggs or Phelps?' Natasha stares at Bruce like he's a moron.

'Can I go back to reading?

'As you wish, Mrs Peel.'

'Where were we _rebenok_? Ahh, '_The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning. Then soul-erosion produced by high gambling - a compost of greed and fear and nervous tension - becomes unbearable and the senses awake and revolt from it..._' Thus Bruce and Natasha spent their Sunday afternoon, curled up on one of Stark's ridiculously luxurious couches reading to their unborn baby.

(When Bruce and Natasha start calling each other Steed and Mrs Peel over coms during battle Tony complains about 'lame, geeky flirting', Thor and Steve are amusingly confused, and Clint just smiles. Fury is less than amused when Bruce and Natasha give him a packet of macaroons and call him Mother.)

* * *

**Nineteen Weeks, Five Days**

'Cliiiint!'

'Yep?'

'My feet hurt. And my ankles have swollen up, they're all puffy and red.'

'Uh, um, bomb… Times Square… Alien… Uh… Invasion… Thingy… Gotta go!'

'Bastard! I'm getting Stark to be godfather!'

'What am I agreeing to?'

'Being godfather.'

'Sure, cool! I'd be the most awesome godfather ever. I could show your little spawn how to build robots and program and-'

'Rub my feet.'

'No.'

'Yes.'

'No.'

'Yes.'

'No _way_.'

'But they're sorrrre!'

'That's what you have Bruce for.'

'Oh, right… BRUCE!'

'What?! Is it the baby?! Is it coming? It can't it's too early! Do you need me to take you to a hospital?!'

'No. My feet hurt.'

'Oh, okay…'

'_Oh_, wow, I swear to god you have magic hands.

'Well…'

'Magic hands which will never go higher then my knees ever again.'

'Good to know sweetie.'

* * *

**Twenty Weeks, Five Days**

'Wow.'

'Yeah.'

'Holy cow.'

'Yeah.'

'Darcy and Pepper-'

'I'm pretty sure this is covered in their role as co-godmother.'

'Yeah, Jane will help.'

'It's not like any of them would dislike doing it.'

'Why would we deprive them?'

'Exactly, we're not that cruel.'

'There's a good looking restaurant across the street, do you want to get something to eat?'

'God, yes, I could eat a horse.'

The two superheroes turn in the doorway and flee the baby store as fast as they possibly can.

* * *

**Twenty-One Weeks, Six Days**

'Bruce! Bruce! BRUCE!' The twenty-one week pregnant Black Widow, came barreling through the doors of the lab, supporting her stomach with both hands as she ran as best as she could.

'What? What's going on? Are you okay? Is the baby okay?' Most people would have found his concern endlessly amusing if it wasn't so downright sweet.

'We're fine. But guess what?' Natasha was uncharacteristically bouncing on the balls of her feet, practically vibrating with energy.

'What?'

'The baby kicked me!'

'You felt him move?'

'Yeah, here,' She grabbed his hand and slapped it on her stomach and fixed her eyes on his face, giggling like a schoolgirl when he felt the movement.

'He's a real kicker, just like his _mama_.' Natasha beamed with pride.

'Do you think they do martial arts for babies?'

'Natasha!'

'It is best to start them young.'

'He kicked again!'

They sat on the couch in the corner of the lab for the rest of the day, Bruce's hand glued to her stomach as the marvelled at the existence of this _thing_ that they'd created together.

* * *

**Thirty-Three Weeks, Two Days**

The mission is top priority, the only reason why the eight-month pregnant Black Widow is in the field, if she would call sitting in the quinjet hovering above the HYDRA base 'in the field'. Bruce does and was quite opposed to Natasha's presence, but when Natalia Romanova wants something she gets it.

Natasha was sitting in the cockpit when Iron Man went down, his suit's electronics knocked out by a specialized EMP. He was now lying motionless under a pile of rubble. The rest of the team was losing badly. Clint's shoulder was dislocated and he was running out of ammunition quickly. Thor had been shot up with enough tranquilizers to kill a herd of elephants and was fighting like a college girl after a keg party. The Hulk and Captain America were fighting valiantly but their energy was flagging. Natasha couldn't bear to watch it any longer, she set the plane on autopilot and hopped out (Read: Jumped out of a plane hovering twenty meters above a base that was currently being decimated by her baby daddy's alter ego), her stomach supported in a black kevlar belly band that fit in nicely with the lines of her uniform.

Later in Medical Darcy will tell her she was a 'Total Badass Kung-fu Momma' and Natasha will tell her she does not do 'Kung-fu'. But for now Natasha focuses on the matter at hand. Pregnant or not, she is no longer Natasha Romanoff. The part of her capable to function as such is turned off, she is only the Black Widow. She hits the ground in a crouch and pulls out the guns strapped to he hips and begins firing before she's even fully straightened up. She's decimated ranks of minions with her sprays of bullets and she can hear her husband roaring in the distance.

Then the unthinkable happens.

Her water breaks.

She barely winces as the contractions start, timing them carefully in her head even as she exchanges blows with a HYDRA agent. Eventually her carefully heightened and maintained pain threshold gives out out and she crumples to the ground, curling herself in a foetal position around her stomach as agents kick her. A loud roar echoes over head and a large green hand comes down to swipe away Natasha's attackers. She rolls onto her back and reloads, firing bullets between each contraction. Tony's suit comes back online at a contraction every six minutes and he limps over. Clint is curled under a piece of fallen rock with a dislocated shoulder and Bruce is Hulked out and her only hope for 'proper' medical assistance is essentially useless.

So she's stuck with Tony Stark, self proclaimed Genius Billionaire Playboy Philanthropist, a man with only a genius level IQ, an engineering degree, and two children of his own to recommend him for the job, delivering her baby into the middle of a battlefield. Great.

'So, Natashalie, we're having a baby.' He smirks but Natasha can see sweat on his forehead since he's pushed his faceplate up. Clint limp-crawls over and Natasha reaches for his good hand, squeezing it tightly.

'No. Bruce and I are having a baby. You're just helping since everyone else is unavailable.' He smiles, which strangely reassures her.

'I'm going to have to cut your suit open.' She kicks him. Hard.

'Ow, yeesh woman. I'm trying to help you. You're having a baby in the presence of a good portion of HYDRA's minions, I really don't think this is a good time for you to become modest.'

'Fine. Do it, but if you peek in any way that is remotely non-medical your bones will be ground to make my bread.' She laughs at his genuine terror until a contraction hit and she grits her teeth and fires off three bullets into an attacking agent's head.

'Okay then.' As Tony pulls the knife from her boot and starts to cut up the inseam of her suit Natasha fires off a few rounds, each creating a perfect red hole in the target's head. She screams and shoots for a few minutes as Tony confers with JARVIS. Clint lets out a little whimper from her vice-like grip on his hand.

'Okay, um, JARVIS tells me you're not supposed to push yet, so don't, since you're not dilated enough, and um, yeah.' Tony looks like he's afraid she's going to shoot him. Silly American, everybody knows you don't shoot the person delivering your child until _after_ the baby's born.

'You ready for this partner?' Clint's eyes dance at the old joke.

'Well it's going to happen whether I'm ready or not.'

The experience of having a child is the most painful Natasha has ever undergone she decides (Blowtorches have _nothing_ on going into labour without anaesthesia). She's screaming and Clint's screaming from the crushing force of her hand wrapped around his and Tony's yelling at JARVIS and the Hulk is roaring and buildings are exploding overhead and bullets are ricocheting off the concrete wall they've taken shelter under and there is the sound of helicopters and the Helicarrier in the distance.

Then all of a sudden it's quiet and Tony Stark is handing her a small, perfect body that can't possibly have come out of her and Bruce, and yet despite all proof to the contrary she knows that this tiny human is her's, or rather she's his since he's captured her heart so utterly. The baby wiggles in her arms and his big brown eyes blink sleepily and, propped up against a chunk of concrete surrounded by her teammates in her ripped suit holding her newly born son, Natalia Alianovna Romanova starts to cry.

'_Vy ochenʹ lyubil svoyego malysha. Papa i ya dam nikakogo vreda pridet k vam_.' She gently strokes her son's nose. Suddenly she feels massive arms enveloping her and her child, cradling them both as the Hulk coos over the baby, who's sleeping soundly in his mother's arms.

The Hulk gently scoops up Iron Man and Clint, being careful not to jostle Natasha as he bounds onto the deck of the Helicarrier.

'See, I told you, our little demon spawn's a boy.'


	4. Tomorrow Never Dies

**Epilogue**

The marriage of Natalia Alianovna Romanova and Dr Robert Bruce Banner was a quiet affair that took place in a modest church in one of the less auspicious corners of Volgograd on a chilly November afternoon. It's not announced in any of the papers and nobody has been warned of it excluding those involved, who were only told of it the night before it happened, yet there is a wave of disquiet in the intelligence community that nobody understands but everybody feels. The spooks and spies of the world check behind them and sleep with their hands wrapped around the guns underneath their pillows. Militaries check and re-check their operations and operatives and everyone locks their doors and checks their guns. Yet if asked they could only tell you of a great fear that they could not understand.

When the Primate of the Church woke up that morning he did not expect to be presiding over the strangest wedding he has ever participated in. Though the bride was quite obviously Russian, and her male bridesmaid and the groom spoke the language almost flawlessly, albeit with an accent, all of the rest of the guests spoke not a word. There was a redhead with two small children who kept glaring at the best man pointedly. A large, black man with an eyepatch glared at anybody and everybody, though his face softened as the ceremony progressed. A tall, blond, Scandinavian man and his tiny brunette wife stood off to one side smiling brightly. A thin, brunette stood off to one side, her posture simply screaming of military experience, a blond man held the same stance in the front row. The other bridesmaid, a buxom woman with thick brown hair and pouty red lips who wore a red dress that looked like it had been through a war and back, held a small child in her arms with the dark hair of the groom and pale skin and eyes of the bride.

The bride wore not a traditional white dress but a bloody scarlet with a black damask lace veil and tight black leather gloves. Her thick red hair was pinned up with jeweled onyx pins and her. Both the bride and groom's smiles were rusty, as if they'd only recently remembered how to smile. The Primate noticed the influx of people wandering around the church that day, looking too perfectly as if they belong for it to be anything other then staged. Names are signed so that they are barely legible. The bridesmaid was a little too edgy for the Primate's taste and kept checking out the sight lines. The Primate sees outlines of the weapons he hasn't handled since the war hidden under suit jackets and dress hems and purses.

It's all slightly more sinister then the Primate would prefer but the way the bride and groom look at each other makes it worth it. He looks like he can't quite believe this is happening and she looks scared it will all go up in flames, yet the sheer, unbridled love between them is almost palpable. He sees it after the ceremony when she's leading her new husband around showing him where she and her parents used to sit every Sunday, where Pyotr Ulynov used to sit in the back and snore through the service and where Vladimir Tymoshenko used to a flask of vodka for morning prayers and where Madame Lavrova used to sit by the confessional and make sure everyone went in.

The Primate smiles. The Bride reminds him of a little girl with hair like blood who used to sit two pews in front of he and his family from the time he was eight to thirteen. The Primate used to stare at the way her ringlets bounced as she moved her head. He glances his grizzled beard and wrinkled and weathered skin and chuckles to himself. She's not the same little girl, too young, her eyes are too hard, hands that have been stained scarlet with too much blood.

But he enjoys the unexpected revisiting of halcyon days he has not recalled in what seems like a lifetime and for that privilege the Primate waives his fee.

The last he sees of the girl with red hair she is leading her husband and a little boy out of the church, dragging them across the square outside to some childhood haunt.


End file.
